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Mount Diablo looms over a small tanker traversing the Carquinez Strait as seen from the rail line that runs along the shoreline. Oil refineries are big business in the area as evidenced by the large tanks visible on the opposite shore. Image from the slide archive.

This is a little late but kudos to the U.S. Air Force and Boeing for the successful flight of the unmanned mini-space shuttle X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, which landed safely at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on 17 October 2014 after 674 days in space. The reusable winged spacecraft launched on its secret mission from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 11 December 2012. This ended the third flight of the X-37B program along with being the second flight […]

The California Science Center in Los Angeles, home to the Space Shuttle Endeavour, has opened Endeavour’s payload bay and is currently installing a Spacehab module used to carry pressurized cargo to the Mir space station and the International Space Station on eight trips into space between 1996 to 2000. This is part of their ongoing efforts to bring Endeavour to its final public display position by 2018 oriented as if for launch and attached upright to a mock External Fuel […]

Sam & I watched live coverage on the computer of the launch of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 11:30 a.m. PDT (2:30 p.m. EDT) on 13 August 2014. This commercial Atlas carried DigitalGlobe’s Earth-imaging WorldView-3 satellite into polar orbit. Unlike launches from Cape Canaveral, which can only go for safety reasons in easterly directions due to population centers up and down the coast, launches from the peninsula Vandenberg […]

Sam and I dutifully awoke at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, 1 July 2014, to watch the launch of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO 2) only to see the launch get scrubbed in the last 45 seconds due to a valve problem with the pad’s water deluge system. Trying again, Sam and I sleepily awakened at 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday to happily see the venerable United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket successfully launch OCO 2 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in […]